-6% to 19%: Arizona teachers are getting raises, although they aren't all 10 percent

#RedForEd and public education issues are big topics on the November ballot. Here's what you need to know.
Carly Henry and William Flannigan, Arizona Republic

Teachers and other supporters of the #RedForEd movement celebrated in early May after the Legislature passed a bill to increase education spending. But that move, spurred by a teacher walkout, was just one chapter in Arizona’s long search for a viable source of better funding for schools.(Photo: Tom Tingle/The Republic)

The plan Gov. Doug Ducey proposed and the state Legislature passed aimed to provide school districts and charter schools enough funds to give teachers across Arizona an average pay raise of 10 percent.

Except, in reality, there is no such thing as an average school district or charter.

The actual raises given to teachers, as reported by the districts and charter schools, vary greatly across Arizona.

According to district and charter financial data reported to the Arizona Department of Education, some schools reported giving average raises of 19 percent. Others reported raises as low as 3 percent. One school reported giving a raise of just over 1 percent.

One district, the tiny Blue Elementary School District in Greenlee County, reported a salary increase of -6 percent because a veteran teacher retired and was replaced at a lower salary by a teacher with less experience.

Practically all Arizona districts and charters reported salary increases for teachers, though those figures widely differed.

Among the state's smallest districts, only 18 out of 47, or about 38 percent of districts, gave out 10 percent raises.

Those schools have extremely small staffs and shifts in personnel can be seismic when measured in terms of averages and percentages.

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Education funding has been a hot-button topic in Arizona since the Great Recession. Here is what you should know before the 2018 midterm election.
William Flannigan, azcentral

Reporting the raises

The budget the Legislature approved and Ducey signed included $306 million intended to go toward teacher pay.

The law contained a sentence explaining that the intent of the money was to fund teacher raises. But there was no mandate. The district or charter governing boards determine how much raises to give their teachers each year.

The law required schools, for the first time, to report to the Arizona Department of Education the increase in average teacher salaries from last year.

As of mid-July, the majority of the state's school districts and charter holders had submitted their budget reports to the state. The deadline is Nov. 30.

The Arizona Department of Education has not yet audited the data the schools submitted, according to department spokesman Stefan Swiat.

The data indicates that some schools incorrectly reported their teacher salary information to the state.

For example, some schools appear to report their entire teacher payroll as the "average salary for all teachers." A few schools list what appear to be very low salary averages.

Two charter schools listed their average teacher salary for 2017-18 as $1 and that their average teacher salary increased by more than 4 million percent, apparently because the schools are new and weren't operating the previous school year.

Promising a 10 percent raise

The state funding was part of a three-year pay-raise package Ducey announced in April, as teachers statewide were threatening a walkout.

His plan called for a 10 percent raise this year, incorporating a 1 percent bonus given in 2017. That would be followed by a 5 percent raise in each of the coming years. The result, he said, would be an average 20 percent raise by the year 2020, lending the plan its name 20x2020.

But there will be vast differences in how those raises are felt by different districts and teachers.

Only 17 teachers in the Phoenix Union High School District will receive a 10 percent raise this year, reflecting about 1 percent of all high-school teachers in the district.

Meanwhile, the sole teacher responsible for a handful of kids in the one-room schoolhouse in the remote mountain community of Crown King will receive a 19 percent raise, bringing her salary up to the high-$30,000s.

The reasons for the disparate distribution of the raises are complicated and varied, based on the unique situations of each district, large and small, urban and rural.

The pay-raise plan allowed for this, placing the money in the overall funding formula that the state uses to disperse funds to districts and charter schools. Allowing each district to control how it spent the money was a key selling point to secure the votes of some Republican lawmakers.

Placing the money in the formula created a mathematical barrier to giving out equitable raises across the state.

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Representatives from the Invest In Education campaign were at the state capitol in Phoenix on July 5, 2018, to turn in 270,000 signatures it gathered to get their education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Glendale schoolteacher Sheri Kisselbach holds the hand of her 2-year-old granddaughter Teigen, of Casa Grande, on July 5, 2018, during The Invest In Education campaign press conference at the state capitol in Phoenix. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Retired schoolteacher Kirk Hinsey celebrates July 5, 2018, at the state capitol in Phoenix on after he turned in signatures he helped gather for the Invest In Education campaign. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign went July 5, 2018, to state capitol in Phoenix to turn in 270,000 signatures it gathered to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Sadie Williams, 11, of Scottsdale, on July 5, 2018, joined the Invest In Education campaign at the state capitol in Phoenix to turn in 270,000 signatures it gathered to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Sadie Williams, 11, of Scottsdale, on July 5, 2018, joined the Invest In Education campaign at the state capitol in Phoenix to turn in 270,000 signatures it gathered to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Red Mountain High School teacher Josh Buckley meets to State Elections Director Eric Spencer, right, at the state capitol on July 5, 2018, to sign over 270,000 signatures that the Invest In Education campaign collected to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Red Mountain High School teacher Josh Buckley speaks July 5, 2018, during a press conference at the state capitol in Phoenix to announce the Invest In Education campaign had collected 270,000 signatures to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign went July 5, 2018, to the state capitol in Phoenix to turn in 270,000 signatures the group gathered to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign went July 5, 2018, to the state capitol in Phoenix, to turned in 270,000 signatures the group gathered to get its education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign turned in 270,000 signatures they've gathered to get their education funding initiative on the ballot at the state capitol in Phoenix on July 5, 2018. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign turned in 270,000 signatures they've gathered to get their education funding initiative on the ballot at the state capitol in Phoenix on July 5, 2018. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Red Mountain High School teacher, Josh Buckley, signs over 270,000 signatures that The Invest In Education campaign has collected to get their education funding initiative on the ballot to State Elections Director, Eric Spencer, right, at the state capitol on July 5, 2018. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Red Mountain High School teacher, Josh Buckley, and retired school teacher, Kirk Buckley, helped turn in 270,000 signatures that The Invest In Education campaign has collected to get their education funding initiative on the ballot. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

Red Mountain High School teacher, Josh Buckley, speaks during a press conference announcing The Invest In Education campaign has collected 270,000 signatures to get their education funding initiative on the ballot at the state capitol in Phoenix on July 5, 2018. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign turned in 270,000 signatures they've gathered to get their education funding initiative on the ballot at the state capitol in Phoenix on July 5, 2018. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

The Invest In Education campaign celebrates after turning in 270,000 signatures they've gathered to get their education funding initiative on the ballot at the state capitol in Phoenix on July 5, 2018. Cheryl Evans/The Republic

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The pay raise was calculated based on 2016-17 salaries reported to the Arizona Auditor General's Office.

The Joint Legislative Budget Committee reported during legislative testimony that schools that paid salaries above that year's statewide average of $48,372 would not get enough money to fully fund 10 percent raises. Conversely, those paying less than the statewide average would receive more than enough.

Another issue was how the state defined the job of teacher. It based its calculations on a count only of teachers providing direct instruction to a classroom of students. Most districts broaden the definition of teacher to include specialists such as speech therapists, instructional coaches and teachers' aides.

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'A shot in the arm'

Schools aren't necessarily complaining.

“We’re all very appreciative of the governor’s efforts and the Legislature’s efforts to get this done, to provide us, really, a historic amount of money,” said Scott Thompson, finance director for Mesa Public Schools, the state’s largest district. “I can’t remember when we’ve gotten this big a shot in the arm.

“Then, again, we’ve been on life support for several years. So, a shot in the arm feels pretty good.”

Mesa was able to give its teachers an average 10 percent pay raise, exactly what the governor promised. But the state did not provide enough money to fund that promise, Thompson said.

The district had to find an extra $3.2 million to get to that 10 percent figure, Thompson said. They used funds approved by voters in a budget-override measure, he said.

Thompson said there was political pressure to get the promised pay raises to 10 percent. A provision in the state budget required all districts to report its pay-raise figure in a prominent place on the district’s website.

Both the governor and lawmakers said that if districts didn’t provide 10 percent raises, residents should raise it with their school boards.

“If you read the tea leaves,” Thompson said, “you saw this is a priority clearly communicated.”

At Tucson Unified School District, the largest district in southern Arizona, the district swept a fund meant for maintenance in order to be able to report an average 9 percent raise to teachers.

The state provided enough additional funds to provide about 75 percent of the raises, according to district documents. The rest came from the maintenance fund, known as “district additional assistance.”

Doing so left the district with “zero capacity” to deal with any maintenance needs, Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo said in a May media briefing. Trujillo said that if any computers broke, the district could not replace them.

“Everything is going into salaries at this point,” Trujillo told reporters.

Phoenix Union High School District, among the highest-paying districts in the state, reported giving 6 percent raises to its teachers.

A district spokesman, Craig Pletenik, said that represented all of the additional money allocated from the state for teacher pay raises. Pletenik said that was because the district has a lot of veteran teachers and has an average salary that is higher than the state average.

Each teacher received an additional $4,600 in salary, Pletenik said. That meant that only those making $46,000 and below received a 10 percent salary. Of the estimated 1,700 teachers at the district, Pletenik said only 17 fit that category.

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Members of the #RedForEd movement gather at the state Capitol as lawmakers push through a budget that includes teacher pay raises.
Thomas Hawthorne, The Arizona Republic

Rural schools face bigger hurdles

Three school districts in rural Arizona communities reported drops in average teacher pay.

Owens-Whitney in Wickiup, in northwestern Arizona, saw a 1 percent drop in salary. It had a complete staff turnover of its teaching corps of two, according to its website.

Skull Valley Elementary School District, located just west of the Prescott National Forest, saw a 2 percent drop, though a note on the district website said that one of its veteran teachers resigned and was replaced by a new teacher with a lower salary. The sole returning teacher, the district said, was given a 10 percent raise.

Similarly, the Blue Elementary School District, near the New Mexico border, dropped its overall salary by 6 percent. That also reflected its single veteran teacher resigning and being replaced by another at a lower salary.

At Littlefield Unified School District, in the northeastern corner of the state, the district reported giving out an average 3 percent raise.

Kevin Boyer, the business manager of the Littlefield district, said that figure reflects retirements of veteran teachers replaced by newcomers with lower salaries.

Boyer said the staff of 25 teachers, split between an elementary and secondary school, also agreed to hire a new second-grade teacher to reduce class sizes that ballooned to more than 30 students. The remaining money funded raises for existing teachers that averaged to 6 percent, he said.

“It was fully discussed with teachers,” Boyer said. “They were all in agreement with that.”

Chuck Essigs, director of governmental relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, said there was an added hurdle for rural districts to meet the 10 percent goal.

The majority of districts outside Maricopa and Pima counties have declining enrollment, he said. So while districts have received more money for raises, they are getting less per-pupil funding, Essigs said.